Upon creating a backup of a computing system, traditional backup systems may perform a validation procedure on the backup to determine whether the backup was created successfully and whether the backup can be used to restore the computing system in case of a system failure.
Some backup systems may use a virtual machine to validate the backup of the computing system. For example, a backup system may first create a backup of the computing system. Next, the backup system may configure a virtual machine that is similar to the computing system. Finally, the backup system may validate the backup by attaching the backup to the virtual machine and by attempting to boot the virtual machine. In this example, the backup system may determine that the backup of the computing system is restorable if the virtual machine is able to boot successfully.
To ensure that the virtual machine has sufficient system resources to boot with the backup attached, a backup system may configure the virtual machine with system resources in an amount that is equal to system resources allocated to the computing system. Allocating validation system resources in this manner may be inefficient because loads encountered by the virtual machine during backup validation may be lower than loads encountered by the computing system. For this reason, some system resources allocated to the virtual machine may never be used. This inefficiency may be amplified when many backups must be validated concurrently.
On the other hand, if a backup system attempts to configure a virtual machine with fewer system resources, validation of the backup of the computing system may fail because the virtual machine may not have sufficient system resources to boot with the backup of the computing system attached. In this example, backup validation may fail even though the backup of the computing system may be restorable. Accordingly, the instant disclosure addresses a need for systems and methods for managing system resources allocated for backup validation in a more efficient manner.